Elon Musk’s Accident Course Director Discusses Autopilot Safety Issues, Silicon Valley Promises

At a time when headlines abound about the capture of Elon Musk on Twitter and his suspended proposal, the new Features the New York Times The documentary seeks to draw attention to the ongoing saga of Muskie’s autonomous technical ambitions for Tesla and the safety issues that the company’s steps led to in realizing that dream.

Elon Musk Intensive CourseThe last part of the FX series New York Times PresentationsIt examines many of the claims the world’s richest man has made about Tesla’s self-driving technology since at least 2014, the reality of how the company’s technology has evolved over the years (cars equipped with advanced systems but not currently can drive alone) and accidents involving Teslas AND the company’s “autopilot” feature.

Directed by veteran journalist Emma Schwartz, who previously worked first lineThe film features interviews with former employees, Tesla’s current beta tester, former Tesla leaders and others to illustrate the company’s and Musk’s intense focus on selling self-driving cars.

Throughout the film, some former employees express serious concern about how Autopilot was originally created at Tesla and the company’s marketing and communications resources for its Autopilot and “full self-driving” (FSD) capabilities. Other former senior government officials say automakers like Tesla must address driver “complacency” when running advanced driver assistance systems. However, Schwartz notes that he has also met with sources who “still strongly believe that Tesla can be a leader” in self-driving technology.

The film also explores how Tesla attracts and works with committed and dedicated fans: “The company is capitalizing on that and that’s what’s really interesting,” he says. (Elon Musk Intensive Course He points out that Musk did not respond to multiple interview requests; the hollywood reporter Please contact Tesla for comments.)

the hollywood reporter I spoke to Schwartz in front of the prime minister Elon Musk Intensive Course On how the filmmakers compiled the sources, the dazzling moments in the reporting process, and the “pull” of Elon’s attempt to take over Twitter.

How did this documentary come about and how did you get there?

I was working on early development New York Times PresentationsWe tried to convey the ideas we had. One of the questions was: can we look at Elon Musk? At first I thought, well, well, there was a biography, it’s in the news every day, what are we going to say? When I started reading and talking to people, [I] I really got interested in creating a self-driving car with this effort. There were all sorts of questions about the security of the technology, whether the government did enough and what were the key facts: How secure is the technology? And none of them seemed easy to answer, and as I started talking to more people, it became very clear that this was a project that Elon Musk was heavily involved in and that he had been given a lot of important decisions. So it started out as a story that looked at one person, but also at business and security issues that had come up over the years.

How difficult was the process of bringing former Tesla employees and current Tesla owners on board?

I would say that in any documentary, especially one that deals with business, challenging stories or powerful people, finding or finding people who want to talk to the camera is always a challenge. It was a challenge in almost every project I think about. It was actually more difficult, I would say you are dealing with a business, you are dealing with people with privacy agreements and you are dealing with people who fear a possible backlash when talking about a very strong person. . But we did what all good journalists do: talk to as many people as possible. To be fair, not everyone had the exact same perspective as part of the interesting part. There are people who still strongly believe that Tesla can lead this group. There are others who left because they lost faith in the mission. I think in the end it was a few years and a lot of questions that people were asking and I felt like now was exactly the time they wanted to talk.

The documentary begins with the death of Joshua Brown, and it is a story that the film returns to repeatedly throughout the narrative. What was behind the decision to continue watching this tragedy?

The Josh Brown crash was the first known fatal crash in the United States and was the most public The case is under investigation, so it gave us the biggest window to understand what happened, who was to blame, and what might not be missing from Tesla’s answer. It also gave us character and personality to understand why Tesla is a company built on a very large fan base and there are many people who believe in the mission. It had a huge impact on what Tesla did in the mainstream of the electric car idea. The story of Tesla and Autopilot has attracted so many fans interested in being on the cutting edge of technology and wanting to try something because it’s exciting. The company capitalizes on that interest and is an interesting part of it.

Was there a moment that particularly surprised you in your coverage?

There were a few things. One thing people here sometimes forget is that Josh Brown’s family didn’t speak publicly after the accident, but they did make a statement that we have in the movie. I found it interesting that, after all they’ve been through, they’re still waiting for technology to advance. That’s not everyone’s answer, and it came as a surprise when I first looked at it.

Another surprise for me was when I came across a press conference that Elon Musk had a few months after Josh Brown’s accident, where he said we made changes to the driver monitoring system, we made warnings, and it looked amazing. , Super Duper Radar. Someone asks at a press conference, “Okay, if you had this radar, would it have saved Josh Brown’s life?” And Elon Musk replies: “I think so. I mean, it might not be 100%, but it probably is,” he said. This was surprising and really unbelievable to me as I was reading this a few months after the company decided to turn off the radar. So it was obvious what they were doing with the technology point of view and I was wondering, well has technology changed or is it all or is it all message?

They started asking me questions about what the strategy was like. I have no answer. There are people who support the company’s current decision and say [Tesla was] Get a lot of false positives and remove the radar [driving] Safer. You can see this from some YouTubers. You talk to other people in the self-management industry and they say you always need different types of technology because they all have pros and cons and having a balance is beneficial for everything to be safe. But working with different technologies is certainly not so easy. So those are the two sides where everything is.

It’s clear that the media is focusing on startups or tech companies that have over-promised or made misleading claims in recent years. Do you think Tesla felt that extra control in the recent past if he escaped to some degree?

That’s an interesting question, and it depends on who you ask in the Tesla world, right? Because there’s some truth to the fact that Tesla shocks get more attention than other cars. All accidents involving Tesla do not necessarily involve autopilot or other technology. So there are people who think Tesla is drawing inappropriate attention. On the other hand, when you look at regulatory actions and what the government has done, yes, you have these investigations, but the government has not taken any strong action. One of the challenges is that the government says, “We don’t have enough data.” They begin to collect data on accidents that occur with advanced driver assistance systems such as Autopilot and FSD. [Full Self-Driving] And you must publish the data all the time, [but] I’ve been waiting for months.

So from that perspective you can say they were all accidents, but there were no new government rules. NHTSA [the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] Did not follow NTSB recommendations [National Transportation Safety Board] They called for more regulations on advanced driver assistance systems, so to some extent both are true. Essentially, it could be said that Tesla really is getting more attention, but when it comes to whether the government was actually able to retract the concerns raised by the researchers, it hasn’t.

Given everything you know about Elon Musk and his work on this documentary, what do you think of Musk’s recent proposal to take over Twitter?

Well, you know, ridiculous. It’s the part of the movie where we have a clip of Elon on Joe Rogan’s show where he points out how to stay away from social media, except he’s been holding back on Twitter because he needs some way to get information. At the time, I thought it was an exciting time, considering everything he’s said on Twitter over the years. Now that I look at it, I don’t have the exact word, but somehow I laugh: it feels like we know something that we didn’t really know when we shot it on film. But it certainly attracted a lot of attention and was something of an attraction, like Elon’s other ventures.

What will your film take away from the audience?

There are some things people will take away. On the one hand, I hope people are more aware of the promises and ways in which Elon Musk, one of the most powerful and wealthy business leaders of our time, is delivering. That, to some extent, the story of trying to create a self-driving car is a microcosm. And second, I hope it helps people think more deeply about the field of silicon, the technology and the promises that we all sell.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.